Sunday, July 20, 2014

On this, the 70th anniversary of the death of
Philip Albert Justis, I wanted to take a minute to write a brief memorial from
what we know about his life and death.

Philip Albert Justis was born in Somerville, Massachusetts
on 16 February, 1916. The 1920 Federal Census finds him living in Somerville
with his parents, Albert Young and Mabel Alberta (Irving) Justis. By 1930, the census shows the family living
in Wellesley, Norfolk, MA, where his father worked as a printer. He had no
siblings, but Mabel’s niece, Lina Irving (age 17) was living with them.

Ten years later, Albert was working as an executive for a
drug company, and Philip was a stock clerk in a wholesale drug company. For
reasons we can only suppose, Philip enlisted in the U.S. Army as a Private in
Boston on 15 March 1941, nine months before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

It is at this point in the narrative we must mention one of
the most tragic events in family history research: The fire at the personnel
records center in St. Louis, Missouri in 1973. Millions of service men and
women’s personnel records were lost. Both the fire and the resulting water
damage to records have created a documentary disaster that is still being
sorted out over forty years later.

The next document we have been able to locate for Philip is
his burial record, listed on the website of the American Battle Monuments Commission
(ABMC). They list his service number, 31030229, his date of death, 20 July
1944, his rank of Sergeant, and the fact that he had been awarded the Purple
Heart. His body lies in the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer,
France in Plot E, Row 14, Grave 36 overlooking Omaha Beach. We also know from
the ABMC listing that Philip served with the 359th Infantry
Regiment, 90th Infantry Division. Recently, I was contacted by a findagrave volunteer who was headed to Normandy and volunteered to both photograph and do a rubbing of Philip's headstone. When folks come to photograph the headstones, volunteers provide sand from Omaha beach to rub into the engraved letters to make them stand out for the photograph, and then clean the headstone afterward.

Poignantly, his mother died three years after her only child’s
death, and their marker in the Needham Cemetery in Needham, MA lists Philip’s
name and dates of birth with “Lies in France” underneath. His father passed away in 1956.

Because he had no siblings, there are few folks left who
knew him at all, but last year, I called his cousin, Ginnie, who lives in
Wellesley. She recalls him as a quiet, serious man who was always kind.

I hope one day to know a little more about Phil’s last days,
but in the meantime, I just want to remember and be grateful for his service
and sacrifice.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

We recently interviewed my father-in-law by telephone to learn more about his history in the Navy. We learned that he joined the Navy Reserves in 1950 at NAS Grosse Ile, and began training as an aerographer, or Navy weatherman. Apparently there was some sort of paperwork snafu, he was supposed to be exempt from attending drills, and when he didn't attend, got turned in for not attending. He returned to the draft board, who sent him to the personnel office. He spent a brief time as a clerk until an opening came up in the photography lab. He took a few photos and was told "Welcome Aboard!"

During the time he was stationed at Grosse Ile, he took classes at the University of Detroit. He also found a way to hop MAC flights to exotic places in the Carribean such as Puerto Rico, Cuba and Jamaica.

He became an aerial photographer, as seen here in the bubble of a PBY Catalina. After two years, he left the Navy to finish his studies at the University of Detroit. He was working at the University of Indiana when his co-workers starting tell him good-bye. They had seen that an opening at the University of Puerto Rico had come up and knew that he would take it, and he did.

Monday, February 24, 2014

Recently we hosted a
new-found cousin for a week. We had met via ancestry.com, got acquainted through email and skype, and formed an eternal bond during our visit. Like my
mother-in-law, she grew up in Jamaica, but now lived and worked in Germany. I
had extended an invitation to her that if she was ever in the States to visit
with us, and she took us up on it in February.

The family name we have
in common is Robinson from Jamaica. Her great-grandfather, Rose Bingham
Robinson and my mother-in-law’s great grandfather Charles Robinson were
brothers. His first name of Rose is a family surname, and yes, it does cause a
good bit of confusion regarding his gender, but several documents confirm him
as a him.

On our last night
together, I was introducing her to the joys of familysearch.org. We were able
to find several documents for which she had been searching for some time.

Above are the christening record for her grandfather Earnest, and the death record of Rose Bingham Robinson.

Almost as a
post-script, I mentioned another website that she might find helpful,
findagrave.com. I wasn't too sure there were many memorials from Jamaica, but I
thought I’d enter Robinson as a search term without a given name just to see
what turned up. The search results showed nine Robinson memorials in Jamaica,
including an R.B. Robinson, died 15 April, 1899. We held our collective breaths
as we double-checked the death date from the document we’d just found on familysearch.org.
Then the collective hooting began! It was him, the great-grandfather whose
burial place had always been a mystery to her. And more amazing that he was
found in a cemetery in Port Maria, so very close to the village where she grew
up.

How did we ever do family
history before the internet?

(Many thanks to Scooter T for the photograph and findagrave memorial!)

Sunday, February 2, 2014

I never met Louis
(pronounced in the French “Loo-ie”) Derragon (der-A-gun). But over my lifetime, I heard so
many stories about him that I felt that I had known him. He died in his
mid-forties, a few years before I was born, and according to my dad, he was
asthmatic, so apparently that was a contributing cause of death.

His photos all show a
handsome, open smiling face, and the whole family seemed to hold him in the
highest regard.

One photograph shows him in the traditional Navy “crackerjack”
uniform. My dad remembered that he worked at the Fargo Building in Boston as a
recruiter, since he was restricted by his asthma. Many years later in an
ancestry.com search, I came across the application for a military headstone for
him. I was surprised to see it listed his service aboard the USS Ira Jeffrey as
a Ship’s Cook First Class.

It was very interesting
to learn about the history of the USS Ira
Jeffrey. Based on the time period of Louis’ enlistment, 7 November, 1942 –
25 Sep 1945, and the time line of the Ira Jeffrey,
13 February 1943 until it was sunk in a target exercise off the coast of
Charleston, SC in 1962, it looks like Louis may have been a “plank owner,” or
part of the original ship’s crew. It also suggests that Louis may indeed have
spent some time as a recruiter in Boston before his time aboard the Ira Jeffrey.

A history of the
Charlestown Navy Yard published by the National Park Service states: “The Fargo
Building on Summer Street in South Boston which served as headquarters for the
First Naval District. The building today is owned by the Army and known as the
Barnes Building.” It was a recruiting and processing station for the Navy
during WWII.

The Ira Jeffrey was built at the Bethlehem-Hingham
Shipyard in Hingham, Massachusetts in 1943 and was sponsored at its launching
by the mother of the young Ensign for whom the ship was named. The shakedown
cruise took her crew from Maine to Bermuda, and then an assignment to Quonset,
RI. From there, she escorted eight troop convoys to Europe. From The
Dictionary of American Fighting Ships, we learn that: ‘On the [last] return
crossing, 20 December 1944, the escort's convoy was attacked by a German submarine. After sinking an LST and damaging destroyer escort
FOGG (DE-57), the submarine was
driven off. IRA JEFFERY assisted the damaged ship and eventually escorted her
through rough seas to the Azores.”

Following her cruises
across the Atlantic, the Ira Jeffrey was converted to a high-speed transport at
New York Shipyard, and following a shakedown cruise in the Chesapeake Bay, she “then
sailed 25 May with aircraft carrier ANTIETAM
(CV-36) for the Panama Canal and Pearl Harbor, where she arrived 18 June 1945.”

In San Diego, she began
training with underwater demolition teams which entered Pacific beaches in
advance of the “American occupation landings,” and after island-hopping her way
across the Pacific, returned to San Diego. The Ira Jeffrey was
decommissioned in Jacksonville, Florida
in 1946.

Although he is listed
as a Ship’s Cook, I know that he must have received other training, at least as
a fireman – all Navy ships train their crew as fire/damage control. I was able to learn a good deal more, thanks to Tim Rizzuto and the wonderful museum of the USS Slater in Albany, NY. Visit their website here: http://www.ussslater.org/ Tim took the time to answer a few questions via email and fill in some of the blanks, such as

during WWII, Louis probably received gunnery training as well.

I have not yet acquired
the marriage record of Louis Philizia Derragon to my Aunt, Agnes Louis Smith,
but they were married in 1945, and remained wed until his death in 1955. It is
a great regret of mine that I did not take the time and overcome some timidity
to ask Aunt Agnes more about a man with such a history as Louis Derragon.